The present invention relates in general to interactive communication networks such as the Internet or other public or private networks (generically the xe2x80x9cInternetxe2x80x9d) and, in particular, to providing user targeted content including content initially displayed or otherwise presented during interval and/or dead time (xe2x80x9cwaiting timexe2x80x9d) of an Internet session, e.g., during processing time associated with the exchange of information between the Internet content providers and Internet content users.
In recent years, public participation in the Internet has expanded at a rate that has, at times, surprised industry analysts and service providers. This expansion has not escaped the attention of the business community who is actively searching for ways to capitalize on this medium of ever-increasing importance. In the attempt to quickly respond to this phenomenon, the business community and its promotional and advertising consultants have sometimes analogized the Internet to more familiar media in order to analyze business opportunities and apply accumulated experience and wisdom to the unfamiliar and poorly understood new medium. In this regard, some have viewed the Internet as a form of electronic publishing and have focused on printed media as an instructive business paradigm. Others, focusing on the dynamic voice and image potential of Internet communications, have viewed broadcast media as the most instructive source of business experience.
A result of this current tendency to analyze business opportunities on the Internet in view of experiences with more familiar media is that initial advertising efforts on the Internet have closely resembled traditional advertisements in appearance, format and function. Among the most common Internet advertisements are so-called banner advertisements. These advertisements typically appear in high traffic areas such as the home page of a browser, search engine or website, and appear to the user as an area or banner occupying a portion of the monitor working area or graphical desktop. These banners are typically designed much like advertisements in the printed media using well-established principles intended to draw attention away from the primary content to the banner and maximize public response. Others have proposed video or audiovisual commercials in the television style. Such commercials, as in television, would interrupt and be interspersed with the flow of information over the Internet.
Such approaches have not been fully effective. The television style advertisement proposals have met great resistance and, in general, have not been implemented by wary service providers. Banner advertisements have also been quite limited in effectiveness. In either case, although traditional demographic projections have sometimes been used to target classes of consumers (e.g., advertisements for investment services on business information sites), advertisements are often not of interest to specific Internet users and response rates are low. As a result, an exaggerated but common lament in the business community today is that nobody is making money by advertising on the Internet.
The present invention is based, in part, on a recognition that the Internet as a medium is intrinsically different from traditional media in ways that demand new business approaches. In particular, conventional advertising techniques largely ignore the interactive basis of the Internet and are therefore subject to certain pitfalls and/or fail to take advantage of certain opportunities of the interactive environment. Examples of business factors peculiar to this interactive environment include the following:
users who select to participate in the Internet medium tend to be interested in retaining control over their Internet sessions and, therefore, often ignore and even resent advertisements that are pushed onto their desktops and interrupt their sessions or intrude on their desktop areas;
although attempts have been made, with some success, to convert the Internet medium to a push medium, content is not typically broadcast over the Internet, but rather, is usually pulled down or retrieved by identifiable users; and
the interactive nature of Internet communications results in waiting times associated with data transmission where the user may be more readily engaged in a manner that is unobtrusive.
These and other factors of the interactive environment are an important basis of the present invention. In particular, the ability to specifically direct advertisements and other content, including entertainment, to users based on user information is an important advantage of the present invention.
According to one aspect of the present invention, selected messages are provided at a user node that are initiated during a waiting time of an Internet session. The messages can be, for example, promotional or advertising content, product information, a public service announcement or other messages of possible interest to the user. The associated process involves providing a selection of messages, monitoring a user node during an Internet session to identify a website access request, selecting a message from the selection of messages and displaying the message at the user node during a waiting time related to the website access request. The waiting time relates to a time interval during which the user node communicates with a server of the requested site and associated set up periods. Preferably, the waiting time during which messages are displayed fall within the time period beginning when the user selects a site and ending upon initiation of site display on the user""s desktop. The selection of messages is preferably provided by storing the selection at the user node, e.g, on the user""s hard drive or in cache, in a local area network of the user, or otherwise in storage accessible by the user without Internet communication. This selection is stored, for example, prior to an Internet session or as an explicit or background function of a browser service or searching engine during an Internet session. A selection may be stored only for use during a particular session or may be saved for use in subsequent sessions.
The website access request can be identified in a variety of ways. For example, operating system messages may be monitored to identify a xe2x80x9cmouse downxe2x80x9d message having desktop coordinates corresponding to a hot link area of the desktop. Keyboard messages may be monitored to identify entry of a URL address or the like. Alternatively, protocol communications such as TCP/IP or HTTP communications of the browser may be monitored to identify a header message associated with a site access request. Upon identifying such an access request, a message can be selected and played at the user node. The message may be selected automatically by logic implementing the process of the present invention, or the user may be allowed to select from message choices, e.g., displayed in a menu or graphically presented in the format of a room or gallery through which the user may peruse.
According to another aspect of the present invention, waiting time messages are terminated at the end of the waiting time so as to minimize Internet session intrusion. The associated process involves providing a waiting time message such as described above, monitoring communications relating to loading of a requested website to identify a selected status relative to the loading, and terminating playback of the waiting time message based on the identified status. In one implementation, the monitored communications are protocol or other communications between a browser and a server of the selected website. Alternatively, operation of the browser may be monitored to obtain an indication relating to loading status. As a further alternative, operating system messages may be monitored relative to website display status. Playback of the waiting time messages can be terminated, for example, upon receiving an indication that a website page is ready for preliminary, intermediate or complete display. In this regard, the user can preferably set the message program so that messages terminate when loading reaches a selected level, e.g., 25%, 50%, or 100% complete.
According to another aspect of the present invention, waiting time or other messages are selected based on user information. Preferably at least a portion of such user information is obtained by voluntary participation of the user. Credit towards free Internet access time or other value may be provided as an incentive to and reward for user participation. For example, the user may provide information relative to the demographics, psycho graphics, product interests and lifestyle of the user upon registering to participate in awaiting time message program. Such information may have already been made available by the user at a separate registration site. Alternatively, information regarding the user may be obtained based on a site access request, a history of Internet usage, or other information that may be derived by monitoring the user node. Additionally, stored user information may be continuously or periodically updated (information and messages may be added and/or deleted) based on a learning process implemented by intelligent code based on Internet usage patterns or the like. Such user information can be employed to tailor the selected waiting time messages to the user""s likely interests, thereby enhancing user engagement and enjoyment as well as improving advertisement response rates.
The user information may be obtained at least in part from a data store including a repository of user information such as a registration site or other user information site or a user information database maintained on the user node. In one implementation, the user information is obtained by accessing a registration information processing system for the World Wide Web that substantially automates the user registration process at websites. The registration system includes a World Wide Web registration website wherein a user accessing the World Wide Web can utilize this website as a repository for registration information so that the user can request this registration information to be transmitted substantially automatically to another website to which the user desires to register. The registration information processing system has a first embodiment using a first system architecture wherein a user need not have any modules specific to the present invention loaded on his/her World Wide Web client node. In this embodiment, once the user has provided registration information to the registration website, when the user subsequently requests to register at a new website cooperating with the registration process, then the user provides this new website with a user ID and optionally password for the registration website together with an indication that any further information may be obtained from the registration website. The new website subsequently is able to automatically retrieve the user""s registration information from the registration website and register the user at the new website. In the context of the present invention logic, resident on the user""s node or at a separate website, associated with selecting and downloading messages for playback during Internet session waiting time or otherwise during an Internet session or other network use, can access the registration site to obtain user information for specifically directing messages of interest to the user based on the user information.
In a second embodiment of the registration information processing system having second architecture, World Wide Web client nodes have registration modules loaded on them so that these nodes may interact with the registration website for providing user registration information to cooperating websites to which the user requests to register. In this second embodiment, the user""s registration information is stored both locally on the user""s client node and at the registration website, the website being used as a backup. Thus, when the user desires to register at a new website or, in the context of the present invention, when logic associated with selecting and/or downloading messages is used to access user information on the registration site, the user""s registration information is provided from the registration module residing on the user""s client node.
In another implementation, user information is obtained from a database used to store user information for dissemination to websites for purposes other than site registration. Such user information may include any of various types of information that are provided or determined at least in part by the user. Examples include: user contact information such as a name, billing or residence address, URL, or phone number; financial information such as a credit card number or bank account number; service or product information useful in shopping for or purchasing airline tickets, hotel rooms, books, music, clothing, etc.; personal interest information for identifying commercial or informational websites of likely interest to the user; personal records such as medical records and investment information (e.g., purchases, when purchased, prices, ticker symbols, numbers of shares, etc.) that may be transmitted to relevant web sties from time-to-time; and other demographic or personal information. This implementation can use architectures as described above involving storage of the information at the user node and/or another node (a dedicated repository site or any other site where the information or a portion thereof has been transmitted) and may involve user identifiers and passwords as described above. The corresponding system involves: establishing a data store for storing user information including information determined at least in part by the user that the user desires to selectively disseminate to other nodes of the network; establishing rules regarding dissemination of the user information from the data store whereby the user information is disseminated based on a release thereof by the user; receiving a request to transmit at least a portion of the stored user information to a target website; making a transmission determination relative to said request based on the established rules; and selectively transmitting the user information portion to the target website depending on the transmission determination. The rules may specify, for example, that the user information may only be released in response to a user password or other code of user, thereby allowing the user to regulate access to the user information. In the context of the present invention, the user information can be accessed by logic(resident on the user node, a dedicated user information site or another site) for selecting and downloading messages so as to better direct such messages based on knowledge of the user. It will be appreciated that the use of such user information to direct messages is not limited to conventional Internet sessions, but may also be employed in the context of cable television, WebTV and other contexts involving user-addressable content.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, waiting time messages are selected, at least in part, on the basis of the anticipated duration of the waiting time. It will be appreciated that the length of the waiting time will vary depending upon, inter alia, the speed of the website server, the amount of information to be loaded, the congestion of the Internet and the associated configuration of the path from the website to the user node, the nature and bandwidth of the legs of the communication path between the server and the user node, the communications network selected, the speed of the user node processor, and the operating parameters of the browser or other services involved in server/user communications. Some or all of these factors may be taken into account in estimating waiting time. A waiting time message or messages are preferably selected based on anticipated waiting time to increase message effectiveness and user enjoyment. For example, a short message may be displayed or played where the waiting time is expected to be of short duration and a room or gallery of messages may be made available in the case of a longer waiting period.
The present invention thus provides advertising or other content of likely interest to the user in an unobtrusive manner. It is believed that such content will more readily engage and entertain users and, therefore, will be more effective. Moreover, such content will not interrupt or distract from Internet sessions, can be tailored to the user""s interests, and may inure to the user""s benefit and, therefore, should be more acceptable to users and Internet service providers.